Posted on 11/04/2009 12:39:26 PM PST by rightwingintelligentsia
A spoonful of hope might not be the best medicine, according to a new study from a Carnegie Mellon University professor that asserts that optimism can actually be harmful to mental health.
The study, authored by CMU's George Loewenstein and several researchers at the University of Michigan, measured the emotional well-being of patients in two groups: those with permanent colostomies and those with colostomies that might be reversed.
A colostomy is a surgical procedure -- either temporary or permanent -- resulting in feces leaving a patient's body through the abdomen. Though patients with reversible colostomies initially reported higher life satisfaction, they grew less happy as time went on, whereas patients with irreversible colostomies became happier over a six-month period.
"We usually assume that hope is a good thing and that it's better to have the possibility of relief," said Dr. Loewenstein, explaining the "paradoxical" findings in the study, published this week in the Health Psychology journal. "But, we found that hope has a major downside and can prevent happiness."
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
What a crock.
Hold on to the virtues of faith, hope and charity.
HEY RWI!! Prisoner6 was writing about this article on the Q and R morning thread. Only at CMU...
Well they might be talking about the kind of hope Obama is serving up...we know that is dangerous in many ways...
College professors are far more likely to be detrimental to health.
If hope is bad for your mental health, imagine what change will do to you!
Pessimists are right more often, but an optimist has more fun.
Paraphrasing a bit here off memory.
Hi, K-mom. I must have missed that.
Will have to go back and check.
Exactly, Hope is great, more like the medical world is soul crushing ...
Despair is so much better. /s
What makes you so critical. Without any experiments I would expect that people that hope to something unattainable are less happy in the end. The researchers merely supported that with empirical evidence.
YOu must be a Pitt graduate. :)
agreed. I just wish i could do something without a degree nowadays... wish they still had apprenticeship kinda things
They are of the same mental illness as those who followed Jim Jones down to their deaths in Guyana back in '78.
Not the first time we see them giving bad advice.
One can also live in hope as a permanent state of mind or live in success of that hoped for outcome and most likely have the same ‘happiness’ as the one who lives within the unknown. The virtue of hope based on God is a knowing that God will do as God sees fit and that in and of itself is a permanent outcome and thus parallels the ‘happiness’ factor based on the known as mentioned in the article. Takes a smart mind to actually work through this data and an objective mind, not a biased secular idiot with blinders.Of course the Obama hopey changey crowd is unhappy as you can't rely on a human to provide you with consistency as one can with God. You can't ultimately trust a human and certainly you can not trust a narcissist who only cares about themselves.
Is this an example of how conclusions are drawn these days? They aren't very sophisticated thinkers.
Duquesne :)
Hubby was Pitt.
Father-in-law:CMU
THAT explains my antipathy.
He just mentioned it briefly because I used the phrase “glimmer of hope.”
This surgery can cause someone to “poop” through their belly button? Imagine sitting there in a restaurant and you think you have to fart but, wala, you have a lap full of poop.
BTW, this study is poop. If you have hope and the cause is lost, you will still enjoy the remaining days of your life. If you are sad and hopeless, you can live to be 99 and in a mansion and you’ll be miserable.
Like I said, this study is poop.
Living without hope is the black hole of the universe.
I think these researchers have confused being hopeful about a specific thing or event, versus a positive attitude towards life.
One can also live in hope as a permanent state of mind or live in success of that hoped for outcome and most likely have the same ‘happiness’ as the one who lives within the unknown.
I meant to say
One can also live in hope as a permanent state of mind or live in success of that hoped for outcome, most likely have the same ‘happiness’ as the one who lives within the known (or in the study the known outcome crowd.) because that state of mind as lived as a known. As the accepted outcome.
Okay. I got a visual on that one. LOL. Are you saying this study that looked like just a fart turned out to be total crap. LOL!?
Hold on to the virtues of faith, hope and charity.
Yes. Thank you Salvation!! Worth repeating over and over again!
I'll be very happy if I don't.
As nearly as I can tell, this study suffers from the common malady of liberal word redefinition.
It depends on what the meaning of "hope" is.
Impractical, daydreaming, "gosh, it sure would be nice if..." labeled as "hope" could have the effect described. Such "hope" is the opposite of realism and pragmatism. It breeds laziness and dependence.
But the hope which is born of faith in the Lord is different.
Hope generated from faith in God is real, and is the looking forward to that which will surely be, not that which I wish might be. This kind of hope does not deny reality, nor absolve me of the responsibility to choose and act well, but ensures me that Good will triumph and that my choices will be rewarded.
“The reason that hope might lead to more misery might be because our brains are resistant to adaptation unless we know that it is definitely necessary...”
I guess that confirms the old, ‘where there is life, there is misery’ adage.
This makes perfect sense, but they used the wrong words in this article.
“Hope” is a very poor choice of words.
What they are describing here is actually macontention. Not hope.
When people have the expectation of something, and they do not get it, this is malcontention. They resent the fact that they don’t have something. It’s not “hope” that is the problem. It’s “expectation” or entitlement that is the problem.
“Hope” is a concept without a sense of entitlement. One dreams and believes in something better. They don’t expect it.
I don’t care what everybody else is saying, hope has made me more depressed over the last 9 months and don’t even get me started on change.
I hink it depends on the type of hope? The kind Obama peddled is a false hope in something imaginary and we all know what they created....
Notice I said “virtues” — that’s not what Obama was appealing to — he wanted to influence people any way he could.
That’s not a virtue!
I am asking this sincerely.......What is hope? how does it differ from wishful thinking? My dad always said if you hold out 2 hands and I fill one with hope and one with horse manure, which on fills up faster...? So I ask again, What is hope? we use the word all the time and the dictionary has many different definations...none quite satisfactory to me...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.